All of a sudden I'm getting these giant square ad windows opening at random. No address bar to show me a URL, just the word "TARGETED" in the blue header bar. What the hell evil virus have I contracted now!? Oddly enough, this all started right after my last involuntary McAfee update and forced reboot. Anybody know what this shit is?
Guess I'm gonna try my first-ever System restore to an earlier date tonight. I think a thorough file backup is in order first.
If it makes you feel any better, Forbin, in college I had a similar problem. This program, "Golden Palace Casino", kept popping up on my computer. I had no idea where it came from, and my every effort to get rid of it save for a system restore proved futile. ANd then one day I was using one of the computers in the dorm's comp lab for the free printer paper...and it popped up again!!! I just about cried.
It opened just now when I opened this forum to check it. Could be worse - my 70-something Mom got a virus that permanently set her Explorer home page to a porn site, and any URL you typed in was rejected and rerouted to the porn site. She had to take the computer back to Staples for a full rebuild!
It should be a capital crime to install shit on other people's computers without their consent. Short of that, purveyors of ad- and spyware should be forced to include their names and addresses in their downloads, so that we can visit them for a little chat.
Thanks Nick. It actually seems to have stopped for the moment. MacAffee throws up a "cache overflow" warning once in a while with about the same timing those popups appeared. Had to do the processes window in two shots. Apparently I have a lot going on!
Not necessarily. Sometimes spyware producers will send temporary kill commands to make you think you've solved the problem - that way, when it comes back, it'll catch you by surprise and you're more likely to fall for it again. By the way, what sort of stuff is showing up in the actual ad window itself? The other thing you can do is right-click on the page, then click Properties - that will often reveal a URL that you can use to search for solutions.
Ya know, I wasn't paying too close attention to WHAT it was, I was just so pissed it was happening, I kept closing it the instant it showed up. Some financial ads, I think.
You probably have a trojan, Forbin. Some newer trojans are lodging themselves in the system restore folder, so doing a Sys Restore won't solve the problem. You'll need an antivirus and antispyware capable of scanning hidden files. Try AVG antivirus, it's very effective. And just because it's no longer popping up doesn't mean it's gone. The popups are probably happening on a timer. They'll be back unless you permanently remove the trojan.
Believe it or not McAfee just sent me an apology that one of their updates may have "caused problems," and sent me a new update. Not that it helped any, since an ad for "blackandsingle.com" just popped up a second ago.
Definately sounds like you have a problem. It is time consuming, but you can start by googling each running proccess you do not recognize... sometimes you can find useful info, such as registry keys/files that need to be removed to disable the trojan. Often you will have to boot in safe mode to remove malicious files. The other alternative is to back up imortant files, then format and reinstall, making sure to virus scan those files before you put them back on your pc. Good luck...
Try VundoFix. it worked when I was haveing a similar problem, and it turned out I had something like 30 some odd trojans that my adaware, spybot, and PC-cillin didn't catch.
Immoral's more like it. I've heard good things about Kaspersky's virusscanner finding stuff other programs miss. They've got an online scanner here. It requires using Internet Explorer to scan though. Worth a shot I guess.
Okay, you're just messing with me, right? I tried that and all I could get it to do was search for its own updates. Even after I let it load its updates, it wouldn't let me run the program until I let it search for more updates. And again, and again, and.... That's even more frustrating than the virus!
SpySweeper works well for me, especially in conjunction w/ Norton Internet Security (although I've nothing against other Anitvirus s/w).
Holy poo, I think SpySweeper did it!!! So far so good, anyway. Been on for ten minutes and no ads. Thanks, Nautica!
Hmm. Something just now TRIED to pop up, but SpySweeper blocked it and let me know. To me this says I still have a problem. My goal is for NOTHING to happen at all.
